Hmm. I'm not really sure about the Protection Paladin. The DPS warrior could act as a 4th tank, but I'd want the third Blessing. Maybe use a Retribution paladin. That would give higher DPS on fights that require less than 4 tanks, but lower DPS on 4-tank fights.

What would be your ideal raid?

Posted by
Rohan

19 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Definitely add a 41-pt elemental shaman to that mix, even if you have to lose someone else (probably a hunter or lock). Keeping the Totem of Wrath in a group with 4 other casters will raise overall raid DPS by a MUCH more significant amount.

Personally, I think it would be crazy to take 2 prot warriors. A protection paladin can do everything a second warrior could do, plus they can bless, keep up a judgement, and are better in any AoE situation.

Prot warrior's can do something important that paladin's can't in 25man's. Have 20k health (Buffed). You will never have a paladin tank gruul or OT gruul. Bear's or Warrior's are for this job. Al'ar is another hight tank fight. Phase 2 is all about having a prot paladin to ranged pull adds.

Well, my pally tank fully buffed has near 18K health. With the class difference, a warrior can have max 19.5K fully buffed.

Paladin tanking Gruul has been done in the past and will be done in the future. Same with Mag and same with any 25 men.

How about this, we get three tanking classes and the best tanks that know their stuff will tank whatever they want (and there will be four when DK comes in expansion).

Sure they have differences but they can all do it really good. It will be like healers, 4 classes of healers with each their flavors and only the best of them will be able to get the job done because yes someone can be a sucky healer.

I am MT for my guild. I am considered by very good warrior tank friends as a very good tank. They consider me as their equals. Blizz stated that they will reduce the HP difference and will give us new tools in 2.3 to tank better than it is now.

I respect any tanks of any class as long as they get the job done. Paladin my now have it the hard way because of itemizations and tools but I hope it will get better.

Only the best ones in this game will have the mantle to be tanks (I do not care MT or OT) of any class in end game raids.

In my guild ele shamans are considered = to a mage spot, even though I may not do as much DPS as a mage, I increase 4 other casters DPS by at least 1/5 of there overall dmg, if that total damage was added to my overall damage and compared to a fully decked mage its alot higher....

The 'extra man' paladin really should be Retribution. Retribution brings more nice buffs to the table than Protection. Retribution can fill the Protection's role better than vice-versa. Retribution helps fix a loot-imbalance in the raid, because 2-Handers are undersought and tanking gear is oversought.

The main benefits the party is going to get from a retribution paladin are Sanctity Aura, Sanctified Crusader, Crusader Strike, and better DPS. Having two Healadins, Crusader Strike is going to be especially helpful. The Aura seems a bit limited, but Sanctified Crusader's just great.

Protection Paladins on the other hand have better survivability and better threat generation, neither of which really matter when you have 3 other tanks. Blessing of Kings is going to be dipped into by one of the other Paladins already. Imp. Concentration is nice, but not that important for a Raid.

The Retribution Paladin's challenge will be pulling out his shield for fights which can not be handled by three other tanks. He doesn't lose nearly as much as the Protection Paladin who has to somehow contribute when there's nothing to really tank.

Finally there's the loot balance (let's leave Feral out of the discussion because its gearing is very different from other classes). I notice you've balanced everything out very well between the armor types. Now, consider the case that a boss drops some fantastic tanking 1-hander. How many people are going to need it? Both Protection warriors. If the DPS war is fury, there's a good chance he's going to be in on the roll as well.

What if an amazing 2-hander drops? The shaman will maybe loot, depending on spec. The DPS warrior will maybe loot, depending on spec. Tanking gear's already needed enough in this raid, and DPS 2-handers are currently under-needed.

Protection has its merits, but Retribution brings more to the raid, especially one with so many tanking slots already filled. Lose a tank from the raid and Protection makes much more sense.

That'd be 4 tanks - the 2 prot warriors, the feral druid and the prot paladin. For single tank fights, one prot warrior gets into his dps gear and keeps t-clap/demo up. For 2 tank fights, you've got the feral in cat and the pally in heal gear. For 3 tank fights, you've got an option to err toward DPS (feral in cat) or healing (pally in heal gear). For 4 tank fights, it's obvious. For >4, which I've seen very rarely, you can use the DPS warrior to tank a little bit, or just have one of the other tanks handle more than 1.

Ideally, you would want a retribution paladin but to put it simply most retribution paladins suck and they do crap damage, and I mean absurdly bad damage. A dps warrior in the same tier gear can output around 20-30% more dps.

If you are min/maxing, lets say for gruul, you are going to have 2 tanks, 7 healers, and 16 dps. Most retribution paladins will do 450-500 dps in tier 4 gear. A good warlock/rogue/shadow priest will do 700 dps. Almost all other classes have a buff they can give to their 5-man group also so its not like sanctity aura is an "advantage" either. I would rather have windfury totem or commanding shout as a melee class than improved sanctity aura.

So you are losing out on 250-300 dps on that slot already for giving a 3% damage buff to 15 other members, and a negligible buff (considering you are giving up the buffs of the class you are replacing a retribution paladin with) to 4 other party members.

Lets say you are a mid-tier guild doing gruul and have about 475 dps each. 475x.03=4.75x3=approximately 14dps extra for each other 15 dps. 14x15=approximatley 215 (don't have a calculator on me)

Lets say you are a good guild doing gruul and you're average dps is 600. Thats about 20% more so you will get about 260 dps to your dps from the retribution paladin.

Retribution paladins suck. Period. They have no aggro dump, their sustained dps is crap, and they are inferior to almost every other dps class out there such that their improved crusader aura only improves raid dps if you are replacing a fury warrior or crappy hunter.

Their utility also almost never saves a raid. Having sol and sow is nice, but not necessary. SOW will almost always be up anyways with a protection paladin in the group.

Also, as a prot/holy paladin, I hate having to roll against a retribution paladin that takes away from raid dps and lowers the chance we will kill a boss before the enrage timer.

Paladin gear shoudl go to the paladins helping the raid the most which is a holy paladin or prot paladin.

Anyways, in response to the original post: I think my ideal 25-man raid make-up would look like:

Tanks (3)Prot Warrior x2Feral Druid

2 prot warriors is too many. Have 1 good prot warrior, and 1 fury warrior instead.1 prot paladin is also the best offtank as he can keep seal of wisdom up, has better long-term aggro generation with seal of vengeance, and being uncrushable is best suited to taking crushing blows.Also the feral druid can do great melee dps if you don't need a tank.

Healers (7)Holy Paladin x2 Holy PriestResto Druid x2Resto Shaman x2

You need 3 holy paladins to get all the best paladin buffs which are Light/Kings/Might on warriors and kings/salv/(wisdom/might) on everybody else. Going with only 2 nerfs the entire raid in terms of the best buffs.

Also paladins are still the most mana efficient healers in the game and are the best single target healers. You need at least 2 on any maintank with constant fol spam to keep the raid safe. (the 1 extra being usually on the offtank or when one other paladin is incpacitated).

To maek up for this it shoudl be 2 druids and 1 resto shaman. Lifebloom is simply too awesome. Just keep the shaman for ancestral fortitude procs (using level 1 hw) and at full mana to chain heale verything during burst damage.

Melee DPS (3)Arms/Fury WarriorRogue x2

You should run with more rogues as possible if you are min/maxing, depending on the fight. They are simply among the best dps. Probably 4 rogues would be a better number.

Ranged DPS (9)Hunter x3Mage x2Shadow Priest x2Warlock x2

Hunters suck, especially if they can't keep their pet out (beastmaster being the best spec atm). Keep 2 for balance and misdirects as needed.Shadow Priests and Warlocks you should max out as they have the best dps in the game. Also warlock utilty is needed for most encounters (hydross, mag, vashj) and shadow priests make healers/dps never run out of mana.

Obviously the comments about more warlocks and more shadow priests are way off base. You are limited with the number of debuffs you can place on a target. Warlocks having 4? each and shadow priest probably having the same meaning if you had any more than 2 of each you'd be looking at the bear minimum of 16 debuffs of your allotted 32 debuffs on the target. You'd want sunders and mangle which take up 2 more. Mages will also have debuffs, so you're almost maxed out. You need to limit the number of locks/shadow priests simply because they would spend most of the time wiping debuff after debuff. My group would probably look like this...

Reason for only 1 rogue, they bring nothing to the raid except DPS which can be more than made up for by AP buffs and GoA/WF buffs from enhancement shaman along with their group flurry. 2 elemental shaman because at least +101 spell dmg and healing and 3% crit +mana regen for casters will boost your healing, dmg, and mana regen far above what it would cost to lose a single rogue. As long as they are hunters and not "huntards" you should be just fine with DPS. If you're doing a melee boss, swap out some casters for rogues, but for trash and most boss fights, you're ultimate DPS would look something like it does above.

Enhancement Shaman do NOT suck. You do not bring an enhance shaman to the party because of his DPS, you bring him for his utility, his ability to increase the DPS of the other Melee classes. For that matter, the Shaman class in itself is primarily there for their utility and the ability to make everyone else better... the only thing we can't do is tank and cure tardness.